


treat me like church

by kissmarks



Category: Fire Emblem Echoes: Mou Hitori no Eiyuu Ou | Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia
Genre: M/M, Minor Character Death, Modern AU, Recreational Drug Use, alcohol use, everyone in this fic is a Hot Gay Mess, kamui is literally as tacky as you'd expect, kamui owns a bar and grill, leon and sonya are best friends and soulmates, sorry valbar, there will be sex later if i'm not too chicken to write it lmao, this fic made me remember how much i shipped leon/valbar so i'll probably write a fic for them too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-24 01:07:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14344770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kissmarks/pseuds/kissmarks
Summary: Leon's only 24 and already having a mid-life crisis. When he meets Kamui, he's not sure whether things go uphill or downhill.





	treat me like church

He awakens to a developing headache, light that blinds peeking in through the cracks of the curtains, and low, loud snoring from behind him. Leon groans and presses his face into the soft surface of the comforter—what in the _hell_ happened last night?  


Don’t get him wrong—Jesse is a nice guy and a decent enough fuck, but Leon never had plans to stay. Sometimes you just need to clear your mind. Leon feels this need perhaps a little more often than the average person, but at least he knows what works for him. If it’s not alcohol or retail therapy, it’s sex; and there have been plenty of generous offers at the bars and clubs he frequents.  


Sitting up, he winces as several joints pop, wriggles out of the pair of arms wrapped around his waist. Jesse doesn’t stir. Leon _had_ always said, only half-jokingly, that heavy sleepers were a major turn-on. He’d abandoned his clothes on the floor last night in a relatively cohesive pile, so it’s easy enough to step into his pants and pull on his shirt.  


Leon turns to look at Jesse one last time before he leaves. The blonde looks almost naïve as he slumbers, abandoned arms now gripping the nearest parts of the comforter. “See you around,” he whispers, shaking his head before he steps out of the room, makes his way down the hall and through the kitchen, and leaves the apartment. Jesse probably won’t see him again—at least not for a while. Leon wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he broke any hearts with even the slightest implications of something more after a one-night stand.  


Thoughts of Valbar flood his mind as the door closes behind him. It’s pathetic and he knows it, but no man will ever measure up to him in Leon’s mind.  


He dares not look at himself in his phone’s front camera—he knows his eyeliner is smudged under his eyes in the most unattractive way, that his usually-perfect hair is a bit more tousled than his general liking, and this walk of shame is already _shameful_ enough as it is. At least it’s early. He can slip out of the apartment building relatively unnoticed. The _real_ problem is figuring out how far away he is from the bar—last night is a blur of drunken neck kisses, stumbling down the street singing to darkly cheerful 80s pop songs, and drinking as much water as humanly possible from shitty Dixie cups in hopes of sobering up faster. Leon has absolutely no clue what street this place is on. At _least_ Jesse had been kind enough to surrender his phone charger to him for the night, though Leon has a knack for being very persuasive when he wants to be and probably would have managed to coax it from him anyway.  


“Of _course_ he lives on… whatever floor this is,” he murmurs, confronted with the stairwell—and, judging by the distance down he sees when he peeks over the railing, he’s at least on the fifth floor. Lovely. The echo of his footsteps in the space seems to be in sync with the pounding in his temples as he makes the journey downward.  


Right as he’s at the entrance to the building, ready to trek down the streets in total disarray, Sonya’s ringtone saves his entire life. A sigh whooshes from Leon’s lungs before he picks up. “Hi, Sonya. Did you know I love you? Like, have I ever mentioned how beautiful and amazing you are? It’s the honest truth. You are my _best_ fucking friend.”  


It earns him a laugh from the woman, sultry and silken even through the static of the phone. “You sound hoarse, dear. Is it from screaming all night in the club or from sucking dick? Both?” He can just _hear_ her smirk. “Where are you?”  


“Ugh, shut up. I’m… well, I don’t know where I am? We walked and I don’t remember it being _that_ long of a trip, but… okay. Hang on.” He nudges the door open with his shoulder and steps out into the slowly-warming spring air. “Oh, shit! There’s a 24-hour McDonald’s here. That’s convenient.”  


“Well, okay, there’s one landmark. Anything more interesting next to it that I can look up on my phone?”  


Leon sighs, looks around at the section of town he’s in, until a green-painted building catches his eye. “Hmm… try looking up Lisa’s Bar and Grill?” He doesn’t expect a sudden burst of laughter on the other line, but it’s comforting, to say the least. “I’m guessing you’ve heard of it?”  


“Yeah, something like that,” she responds through a chuckle. He hears the sound of a slamming car door. “Get us a table, actually? I’ll buy brunch, my treat.”  


“Mm, fine. Have I mentioned you’re the best?”  


“I know, dear. I know.”  
…  


Leon’s known Sonya for several years now. In fact, she’s the reason he believes soulmates exist, but on platonic levels. They met in community college, where Leon was in the cosmetology program and Sonya was struggling to actually be interested in graphic design—turns out she wasn’t, and she dropped out shortly after to pursue her art career. They’ve been inseparable ever since.  


This is why, when Sonya scrutinizes him with a wrinkled nose from across the table, Leon grins before promptly sticking out his tongue. “What, is there something in my teeth?”  


“I just don’t understand your taste,” she snorts, rolling her eyes as she stabs her fork into her pancakes. “Valbar, Jesse, that guy at the casino we went to that one time who you insisted looked exactly like Adam Rippon but the only similarity was the ass? You could do so much better.”  


“First of all, _Valbar_ is perfect. And _second_ of all, it was an _exact_ ass match! And, well, uh, hmm…” He’s trailing off, trying to find an excuse for going home with Jesse—sure, the memory of rough, calloused hands seeking bare skin while a clumsy mouth sucks marks into his neck is enough to send Leon’s stomach churning with desire again, but Sonya—for lack of better terms—can’t appreciate what a man has to offer. And Leon respects her interest in women only, obviously, but sometimes his escapades leave her rolling her eyes and spouting lesbian wisdom. He hates to admit it, but sometimes she’s right. “Jesse’s… a good enough guy. He has his own charm, you have to admit it.”  


Sonya smirks and leans forward a little to smooth down his lavender-dyed locks. Leon can smell the vanilla notes of her perfume, and it’d normally relax him if he wasn’t so hungover. “So that’s code for his dick is big.”  


“He doesn’t deserve it. It only _adds_ to his ego,” he huffs, eyebrows drawn together in frustration. “But still, he’s not the _worst_ man I’ve gone home with. Not that I’d lower myself and spend the night with anyone I didn’t _want_ to, but he took care of me after, at least. Some people just don’t bother.”  


Sonya laughs and opens her mouth to reply, probably with something witty and funny and smart because that’s just how she is, but Leon finds himself staring at a gaudy green light fixture behind her instead of listening. He hates the way he is, but he can’t help it—the aftercare is the best part of sex because he can close his eyes as he’s getting cleaned up by his bedmate for the night and drift away. He can travel so far out of the moment and into something else entirely, and suddenly it’s Valbar tending to him, rubbing circles into his tired back with rough, calloused thumbs, so perfect in the way he hovers and fusses and cares. It always ends up with Leon being the last to fall asleep once reality sinks back in. You can never really recover from a giant chasm in your chest, and the repeated attempts to fill it slowly become an addiction. Leon keeps chasing it because he doesn’t know how to break away from his feelings, and there’s no easy way to give up Valbar entirely. He’s his oldest friend, his long-time love… but he’s so completely unavailable, and so Leon can only sit on the sidelines and smile wanly as Valbar leaves him behind.  


He sighs, hating the way it rattles in his chest, and abruptly ducks to sip water through his straw if only to avoid Sonya’s burning gaze. “Sorry,” he mutters hastily. “I guess I’m not really myself today.”  


“Mm,” agrees his friend softly. He can hear the gentle _click-click-click_ of her manicured nails against the table, as if she’s searching for small ways to distract him from the obvious plague he’s suffering from. “Let’s just eat, okay? We can save talking about Jesse for later.”  


“Yeah… later.” Meaning they probably won’t bring it up again—that’s their system whenever Leon’s thoughts are muddled. They swear they’ll talk about it later, but then they never do, and eventually they’ll forget they even swore. Sonya knows when not to push, and he really does love her for it. He’d probably drown in his own self-inflicted melancholy if not for her constant presence in his life.  


He manages a weak, grateful smile in her direction and turns his head to scrutinize the restaurant again, snorting in amusement. All the furniture is green and the floor is checkered tile; license plates and sports jerseys and neon beer signs surround TVs and serve as overtly masculine decorations to liven the place up a bit. They’re in the front portion of the place, but further back Sonya says there’s a bar where regulars drink at all hours. _Apparently_ she goes here a lot, something Leon had no knowledge of until today. He can see why—it’s embarrassing, especially for a woman of her tastes. She claims the burgers are the best in the city, but he’s not so sure that’s the only reason she shows her face.  


“You guys doin’ okay over here?” Leon snaps his gaze up when he hears a voice, lazy and polite, and when he does? A smile slips onto his dehydrated lips, and he leans back into the plastic softness of the booth. The server who’d taken their orders, a petite redheaded woman, isn’t at their table—no, it’s a _very_ handsome man, and Leon can already feel himself chasing the euphoria he so craves. The guy is tall, probably over six feet, dressed simply in a tight green t-shirt (which he fills out nicely) and jeans, but his jaw is sharp and his hair is dark and black, pushed out of his face by a navy blue sweatband. Leon wants to wipe that smirk off his face in ways that shouldn’t come so easily to him as suggestions.  


“Just fine,” he purrs, grinning up at the stranger now. Sonya kicks him under the table, hard enough to hurt, but he ignores it. “The waffles are excellent.”  


“Glad to hear it,” says the man, grinning back. He looks a little confused, but he seems to be going along with it anyway. It’s respectable. “Just let me know if ya need anything else, okay?”  


_Oh, I’ll certainly be letting you know,_ he thinks, but instead of saying it he only nods, mumbles an _mmmhmmmm,_ and lets him walk away. Sonya’s glowering at him now, gripping her mimosa in a way that accentuates the sharp points of her nails. “Come on. Can’t I have a little fun?”  
Sonya huffs, sipping her drink with conviction. “Absolutely not! You just left a guy’s house, and I can tell you’re all hung up on Valbar again, and— _ugh._ I honestly can’t stand you sometimes.”  


Leon winces at how transparent he must obviously be. Is it really so easy for everyone to tell, or is it just Sonya reading him like a book again? He scrunches his nose and shoves a bite of waffle into his face, gaze flitting down to the paper placemat, visually tracing its scalloped edges. “I can’t stand me either. Moving on just—I don’t know how I’ll do it. Or when. You know that.”  


“He could always come around one day,” Sonya suggests softly, obviously sympathetic. Sometimes when she hits a soft spot, she lets up on the severity a little. She isn’t _all_ sharp, cutthroat edges of a broken beer bottle. “I mean, he’s still… you know.”  


“I know.” Leon sighs, mind flashing back to a familiar, painful visual of Valbar shrouded in black, beefy hands tugging fitfully at his sleeves and mouth upturning into bland, wavering smiles. When Valbar’s wife and son had died, he’d been so strong— _too_ strong. Leon knows it was partly for him, and it makes him feel awful if he thinks about it for too long. He feels even worse when his heart burns through his chest every time his oldest friend is around, the way his skin burns with longing at even the slightest _touch_ from him. He’s been in desperate, unrequited love for ages—it’s so deeply, incredibly dismal, like grasping for the stars even though he knows he’ll never be close enough to touch them. Leon is well aware that waiting around won’t solve anything—that the only thing that will heal Valbar’s wounds is time, not him—but his dreams try to convince him otherwise on a nightly basis. Why must he be so horrible? Chasing after a widowed man, filling the void with sex he knows won’t cure everything—it’s the ultimate form of self-hatred.  


Leon groans, shoving his plate aside when nausea twists and turns in his stomach. His eyes sting, suddenly, and there’s a strange, cold numbness that spreads from his chest and through his veins, all the way to the tips of his fingers. He squeezes his eyes shut—hard, almost like he wants it to hurt. Sonya’s already petting his hair and cooing, trying to coax him into drinking water, but he doesn’t want to move. Drama queen that he is, he thinks he’d rather die sitting in this booth with his head on the questionably-clean table than go home to dream of Valbar for another night. Knowing that Jesse will text him later doesn’t help, either.  


“I’m never drinking again,” he mumbles.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you so much for reading! this is my first attempt at writing a fanfic, so expect improvement as i write i guess? i have a lot of other ideas for fe15 fics since i love the game a lot, so stay tuned! i hope you enjoyed and feel free to follow me on twitter @hardinhightown!


End file.
